A variety of online services may retrieve media from a source, such as a media sharing web site or a service that provides media to an application on a user device. The online services may distribute the media to users that access the online services. The media may be content, such as a combination of video, audio, or text.
The content may be sourced from users of the online services, or from publishers of media. The online services may augment the serving of the content with shared content. The shared content may be presented before, during or after the presentation of the content. Alternatively, or in addition to, the shared content may be presented alongside the presentation of the content. The shared content may be associated with meta information, and in response to a viewer of the content accessing the meta information, the viewer may be redirected to another online service.
In addition to shared content being provided, companion shared content may also be introduced to the viewer of the content. For example, the shared content may be presented in a viewing area reserved for the content. In this case, the shared content may be, for example, an in-stream media item played before, during or after the content.
The companion shared content may be presented in an area not occupied by the viewing area used for the content. Thus, the companion shared content may be presented in a format not similar to the content. For example, if the content is presented in a popular video format, the companion shared content may be presented as a hypertext markup language (html), a flash container, or any format capable of being consumed by the viewer of the content.
Thus, by providing in-stream shared content and companion shared content to a viewer of content, multiple routes of augmenting the content is achieved. Further, because the in-stream shared content may be served in a format similar to the content, the companion shared content may be served in a unique and separate way.
In order to provide the viewer of the content control and flexibility, the in-stream shared content may be served with an option to skip viewing the in-stream shared content. Thus, if the viewer is not interested in the in-stream shared content being served in-stream along with the content, a prompt to skip the viewing of the shared content may be provided at a predetermined time. In this way, an online service may retain the viewer by preventing the viewer from being disinterested in the in-stream shared content being provided.